Category Archives: Press

Spanish Flu or Influenza?

Czernowitzer Allgemeine Zeitung, 7-Jul-1918

Spanish flu or Influenza?
The mysterious disease with its many names is on everyone’s lips, or better, in everyone’s – noses, because it is probably only about influenza and sniffles, as is only too understandable in this strange summer. Admittedly, one can almost speak of an epidemic, if not in Czernowitz, where influenza is circulating too, but in many other cities: in Vienna it is on the rise, and there are also reports from Germany, namely Berlin, Munich, Dresden, Mannheim and Karlsruhe, of an increase in “Spanish flu”. The epidemic, whose name and origin has not been properly identified, seems to have originated in Spain and from there it has spread to the whole of Europe. No matter how the disease is called, whether it is flu or influenza or a “Spanish disease”, there is no reason for concern. You can call it annoying, but it is not dangerous. Probably the bacillus that causes so much turmoil all over the world is an old acquaintance, the influenza bacillus, and one may, without fear, if it applies, answer the question “Have you got it yet?” by a liberating Achoo!

[Spanische Grippe oder Influenza?
Die rätselhafte Krankheit mit den vielen Namen ist in aller Munde, oder bessergesagt, in aller – Nasen, denn es handelt sich wohl nur um Influenza und Schnupfen, wie dies bei dem merkwürdigen aller Sommer nur zu begreiflich ist. Freilich kann man beinahe von einer Epidemie sprechen, wenn auch nicht in Czernowitz, wo allerdings auch die Influenza umgeht, so doch in vielen anderen Städten: in Wien nimmt sie an Umfang zu und auch aus Deutschland, namentlich Berlin, München, Dresden, Mannheim, Karlsruhe wird von der Zunahme der „spanischen Grippe“ berichtet. Die Epidemie, deren Name und Ursprung nicht einwandfrei festgestellt ist, scheint ihren Ursprung in Spanien und von dort den Weg nach ganz Europa genommen zu haben. Wie die Krankheit nun heißt, ob es eine Grippe oder Influenza oder eine „spanische Krankheit“ ist, Grund zu Besorgnissen ist jedenfalls nicht vorhanden. Mann kann sie lästig nennen, aber gefährlich ist sie nicht. Wahrscheinlich ist der Bazillus, der die Welt in so viel Aufruhr versetzt, ein alter Bekannter, der Influenzabazillus, und man darf, ohne Angst, wenn’s zutrifft, die Frage „Haben Sie sie schon?“ mit einem befreienden Haptschüh! beantworten.]

R.I.P. Die Stimme • Mitteilungsblatt für die Bukowiner

Bukovina’s longest-running – and only remaining – Jewish newspaper, Die Stimme [The Voice], printed its final edition for December 2017. After 798 editions over 73 years, “Die Stimme”, once founded by Dr. Elias (Eliahu) Weinstein, the former publisher of the Czernowitzer Morgenblatt,

http://hauster.blogspot.de/2013/01/elias-weinstein-eyewitness-of-holocaust.html?m=0

lapses into silent. “It’s sad but inevitable,“ stated both Bärbel Rabi, the editor in chief of „Die Stimme“, as well as Yochanan Ron-Singer, the president of „The World Organization of Bukovinaian Jews“. Really sad, since there’s a lot of history, a lot of wonderful people over the years and for German reading Czernowitzers/Bukovinians an era comes to its end.

The Keeping of Metrical Books in Bukovina

Ostjüdische Zeitung, Czernowitz, December 29, 1929

The Keeping of the Metrical Books is Transferred to the Municipality. The City Hall issues a public note to the effect that both the keeping of the metrical books definitively is transferred to the municipality and the civil marriage becomes mandatory, effective January 1, 1930. In accordance with the stipulations of the law on the keeping of the metrical books, all births and deaths have to be declared to no person other than the keeper of the metrical books appointed by the municipality. Equally all marriages have to be contracted by the marriage registrar of the municipality. No religious act (circumcision, burial, marriage) will be carried out without agreement of the keeper of the metrical books.

2016 Hilde Domin Prize for Literature in Exile awarded to Edgar Hilsenrath

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Edgar Hilsenrath: “The city of Heidelberg’s 2016 Hilde Domin Prize for Literature in Exile has been awarded to German-Jewish writer Edgar Hilsenrath (born 1926). The accolade is awarded every three years to writers who live in exile in Germany, or who have been affected by the issue as descendants of exiles, who tackle the theme of exile in their literary work and who publish in German. In granting the award, the jury stated, ‘In Edgar Hilsenrath, we are honouring a writer whose life’s work has been to communicate the experience of exile through original and daring literature. His novels, which are driven by bleak, dark powers of imagination, are attempts to find ways to speak of the horrific acts humans commit against each other through various forms of the grotesque. His stories are best symbolised as laughter that gets caught in your throat – somewhere between cynicism, sorrow and assertiveness.’”

Marion Tauschwitz: I had the chance and pleasure to talk to him and to give him my biography on Selma Merbaum, he was very interested in. He and Selma could have met at Moghilew-Podolks where Selma stayed for a short while before being deported to cariera de piatra.

At the Jewish Cemetery of Sadagora

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“Bukovina is in every sense a paradox. Everything is upside down here. It almost seems as if this topsy-turvy element had to belong to the nature of this land, as if its character was to consist of this. Everyone feels that Bukovina is something special, not to be put on a level with the other crownlands and that its cultural ties also have a certain nuance of their own,  something different from the ordinary. Yet, they only feel. What this character is, however, very few have so far attempted to fathom.”

This is a citation of Dr. Max Rosenberg from Czernowitz from the year 1914, preposed by H. F. van Drunen to his thesis “‘A Sanguine Bunch’ – Regional Identification in Habsburg Bukovina, 1774-1919” (Book of the Month, January 2015):

http://czernowitzbook.blogspot.de/2015/01/a-sanguine-bunch.html

One year later, in 1915, under the impression of the devastations caused during the Russian occupation, Dr. Max Rosenberg is visiting the Jewish Cemetery of Sadagora and his impressive report – see above – was published by the prestigious “Pester Lloyd” from Budapest on April 20, 1915:

Auf dem Judenfriedhof von Sadagora. Von Dr. Max Rosenberg (Czernowitz).

Am nördlichen Ende Sadagoras, in der Ecke einer weiten Wiese, ein kleiner, früher umfriedet gewesener Platz. Drinnen die charakteristischen weißen Steine, dicht nebeneinander gestellt, wie betende Juden gegen Osten gewendet. Es ist der Judenfriedhof Sadagoras. Ganz still liegt er jetzt da. Wer ihn betritt, hat aber das Gefühl, als ob jedes Stückchen aufgeworfenen Lehms gar manches erzählen könnte. Viel hat dieser abgeschiedene  Ort in der letzten Zeit erdulden müssen. Südlich vom Friedhof liegt das jüdische Städtchen mit seinen niedrigen, von Schindeldächern bedeckten Häusern und den engen winkeligen Straßen. Dort haben die Russen, als sie hier Herren waren, gewütet. Dieser kleine, tote, stille Judenfriedhof gewährt den Eindruck, als wollte er all das wieder erzählen, was der kleine Judenort da unten gelitten.

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